Mayani: Using tech to help farmers feed Filipinos, ensure market, and reduce food waste

Photos showing truckloads of disposed fresh produce went viral in the months after the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions were imposed. This opened the eyes of many Filipinos to the sheer amount of food waste and the long-standing plight of Filipino farmers.

But even without restrictions, the World Bank estimates that around 30 to 40 percent of food gets lost or wasted. “Imperfect” produce, or those that don’t meet the market’s cosmetic standards, make up 40 percent of the total food waste.

In developing countries such as the Philippines, food is lost during harvest or in storage due to limited infrastructure, poor transportation and farm-to-market roads, and lack of post-harvest storage technology.

Local social enterprise Mayani found a way to turn this around.

Waste for some, additional income to many

Mayani is an impact-driven agri-tech social enterprise established in 2019. Their vision is to uplift the lives of over 10 million smallholder farmers in the Philippines. 

“We know that people are not going to buy imperfect crops. That is why we created a story around it and used that for marketing,” said Mayani co-founder and CEO JT Solis. They were able to sell 6 metric tons of these produce through a creative marketing campaign alone.

This was their Bag It Up campaign where customers can put as much imperfect produce as they can in a single bag for only Php 299.00. The apparent success of the campaign encouraged more malls to reach out to Mayani and put up a similar gig.

Ochie San Juan, Mayani’s co-founder and chief farmer, shared that Aeta communities in Zambales were contracted out to plant ube, but when the pandemic hit, the contractor didn’t return to buy the crops.

The communities were left with tons of produce that they needed to sell at the public market 20 kilometers away from their area and lugging around 30 kilos of ube every time they go down the mountain. When their produce doesn’t get sold, they return to their homes and repeat the same the next day.

“It was very difficult for the farmers,” San Juan explained. “They spend so much time and effort to sell their products for a market that is not assured.”

Mayani was able to buy 10 tons of ube from the Aeta communities for Php 35.00 per kilogram. The crops were then used to make cake and was part of a successful Valentine’s Day campaign.

Aside from the competitive pricing and additional take home pay, they help farmers reach more market for the produce. This helps minimize food waste which has been identified as one of most effective ways to improve food security and lessen carbon footprint to help address global warming.

Mayani is just one of the 164,000 social enterprises in the Philippines who pursue triple bottom lines: people, planet, and profit. Despite the contributions of these enterprises to job creation and development, there is still no enabling legal environment that allows them to grow and thrive..

The Poverty Reduction through Social Entrepreneurship (PRESENT) Coalition addresses this through the PRESENT bill. Under the proposed bill, social enterprises will be recognized as “transformational partners of the poor” and to provide support programs, incentives, and a governing body.

Tech for a cause

Now, Mayani is known as the fastest-growing farm-to-table platform. Before growing that big, they started with very real and concrete problems: limited access to market and finding customers who would be willing to buy their products at a fair price.

San Juan attested to this. He has been a farmer for over 30 years and is the former director and vice-president of the Malaruhatan Family Farm Association in Lian, Batangas.

He explained that farmers are often at the mercy of traders and middlemen. If they set the price of the crops lower than the amount it cost to grow, then farmers will always be trapped in a debt cycle.

“When we partner with a cooperative association, we always compute the production costs and then add 20 to 30 percent mark-up price. That will be the agreed farm pick-up price,” he explained.

With the Philippines touted as the fastest growing internet economy in Southeast Asia, Mayani saw a viable opportunity and leveraged the use of technology to bridge more produce from farmers to the people. They “reshaped how food arrives at people’s tables through tech,” said Solis.

They now support over 130,000 smallholder farmers all over the Philippines through its online platform. Behind the scenes, even their partner farming communities are now using tools to digitize their production monitoring and forecasting. These innovative strategies led them to directly supply big companies such as Shell, Robinsons Group, Waltermart, and City of Dreams, among others.

Re-investing back

The current scale of their social enterprise also meant that they could create a big dent when it comes to addressing climate change. They have developed an organic fertilizer and is now in the process of mass producing these for distribution.

“We are encouraging all our farmers to go organic,” said San Juan.

For farming communities who might want to organize their own social enterprise, capability- building and tools will be provided through the PRESENT bill. A similar approach is being done by Mayani to ensure that the farmers can be agents of change and development partners within their localities.

“This is a business wherein social capital and trust-building with the communities are a must,” Solis added.

San Juan explained that aside from organizing, they also do values formation to develop the business and professional skills of their partner farmers. After all, not all buyers put the
community’s welfare as their priority, thus, farmers should know what to look out for and how to do business the right way.

Present for PRESENT

However, current social enterprises can only do so much as it is still the government who has the resources to address the systemic issues at a wider scale.

For San Juan and Solis, this means putting the PRESENT bill in present discourse and high-level conversations with stakeholders.

“If legislators and policy makers aren’t talking about it, then nothing will come out of it,” said
Solis.

For Mayani, the PRESENT bill will augment the interventions in the food chain, particularly interventions that would capacitate Filipino farmers and fisherfolk. They added that empowering the agrifishery sector will be a huge driver of growth and employment, especially in the post-pandemic recovery plan.

“We encourage the broader community to collaborate and see how we ca shore up more possible solutions,” he added. If the PRESENT bill becomes part of the agenda, then it will lead to more support for social enterprises and put marginalized communities at the heart of programs and policies. ###